IT IS so easy to turn this into geeks vs. the prom king, University of Penn statistic professors vs. Derek Jeter. Who do you think is going to win that one in the court of public opinion?

But what is being missed here is the preponderance of evidence against Jeter’s defensive game. This is not just one set of Ivy League academics calling Jeter the majors’ worst fielding shortstop. Just about every respected baseball statistician who has publicized results reveals Jeter is, at best, among the poorest defensive shortstops in the game.

You can attack methodology; you can say no perfect formula has yet been devised to encapsulate all the elements – positioning, speed of the hit ball, field conditions – into a single defensive statistic. However, these metrics keep evolving in sophistication. And Jeter keeps faring poorly in nearly every study year after year. Do you think there is a conspiracy? Do you think statisticians en masse have covertly met and made their quest to soil Jeter’s glovely reputation?

“This study has been done a zillion times and the same conclusion is reached every time,” an AL official said. “What do you think that means?”

For Jeter devotees, it means assailing the geeks. But as an AL executive said, “this isn’t geeks vs. jocks. This is myth vs. reality.” In reality, most baseball officials laugh off the three Gold Gloves Jeter won from 2004-06 in the way they do the four Bernie Williams won as having more to do with offense, fame and winning than with actual defense.

And before this conversation gets abducted by Jeter acolytes sure to make this about his 200 hits, leadership and intangibles, let’s state the following for the record: Jeter is an elite player, one any team would crave. He does possess hard-to-quantify assets. An executive from an AL team that believes strongly in quantifiable metrics over the unquantifiable, nevertheless said, “I don’t like his defense, but I think the guy is the best. There is a presence about him on the field that is second to none.”

But this is not about intangibles or batting average. This is about defense and assessing it with our brains, not our hearts. And even the scouting community that bases judgments on eyeball appraisals, not numbers, used words like “slip” and “regression” to describe Jeter’s fielding. He is still sure-handed, and fine retreating on pops or charging grounders. However, his range is clearly among the majors’ worst. His lateral quickness on grounders, specifically to his left, was cited as deficient.

One AL official said, “You particularly notice with groundball guys like [Andy] Pettitte and [Chien-Ming] Wang how many grounders went through that shouldn’t have. Pettitte must have had a culture shock going from Adam Everett in Houston, who was the best [shortstop], to Jeter, who is not in that league.”

Perhaps the strongest condemnation came from Jeter, who said, “Last year, I didn’t have a good year defensively.”

It doesn’t sound like much, especially since Jeter limited a serial inadequacy to just 2007. Except Jeter is not one to ever publicly apologize for, or criticize, his own game. But this is more than words with Jeter. He rededicated himself in the offseason with exercises designed to improve his lateral quickness and first-step explosiveness. One Yankee official saw this version of Jeter and said, “He set the clock back five years.”

“I’m a lot quicker, a lot more agile,” Jeter said. “Only time will tell, but that is what I worked on.”

No one should be surprised if Jeter’s whole game, including his defense, soars in 2008. The two best defensive seasons of his career, as measured by most modern metrics, were 2004-05. It should not be viewed as coincidence that those were Alex Rodriguez’s first two seasons as a Yankee. Now A-Rod has re-upped for 10 years and Jeter has arrived in camp looking so good that Rodriguez, citing the conditioning, predicted an MVP win for Jeter.

Rodriguez’s new deal led to suspicion that at some point, the Yanks also will have to extend Jeter, who is signed through 2010. But as one AL executive said, “It already is a below-average range left side of the infield. I don’t know that they can live with it for a long term.”

This is the elephant in the room. Will the Yanks move Jeter off of shortstop when the time comes – assuming that time is not here already – or will they be like the Orioles, who kowtowed well past Cal Ripken’s expiration date at short and hurt the organization? Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi avoided that bubbling cauldron by saying they won’t look beyond this season. Jeter said the same, but then cited San Francisco’s Omar Vizquel, 41 in April, in suggesting he could also play his whole career at short.

“I am comfortable with the left side of the infield at this moment in time,” Cashman said. “Do I have concerns in future years? Let me get to future years.”

So if the future is now, Jeter has an opportunity with his streamlined body to punch new data into those computers. Maybe the prom king can still win over the geeks.